“Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an unperson.”

More doctors in more places

One part of the health care debate that has gone under-mentioned is the fact that this debate is necessary at all. One of the biggest problems with health care is that it is a scarce commodity — doctors have little time to actually see patients (15-20 minute appointments being the norm across the industry) and the fear of “rationing care” only becomes a problem when good doctors are simply in too high demand.

America actually has relatively few doctors per capita, and the government could frankly do much more to alleviate cost, particularly the costs of medical school for primary care physicians. The average educational debt for med school graduates is around $140,000. If the government did more to pay for these costs, the financial dynamics for doctors could be changed dramatically. More doctors should be a necessary component of any national health care reform.

Also note that the least appealing field of medicine is the one that arguably means the most to the majority of americans: primary care. Primary care docs get less pay when, as you note debt is insane for med school grads. There is a sensible stigmatization in med school, where if you don’t specialize, other baby docs will be surprised. Add to this an (arguably) greater need for wider knowledger and more people skills, and good primary care doctors are a small and shrinking growth. The magic link generator at the bottom of this post goes to a Wash. post piece that gets at it quite nicely: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/19/AR2009061903583.html?wprss=rss_health